


The Head and the Heart

by elementalmystique



Series: Graceland 1.04 Pizza Box [4]
Category: Graceland (TV)
Genre: F/M, Friendship, Friendship/Love, Gen, Pizza Box
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-29
Updated: 2013-06-29
Packaged: 2017-12-16 14:07:27
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,614
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/862877
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elementalmystique/pseuds/elementalmystique
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>While Charlie is interrogating Eddie, Briggs talks to Mike and reflects on things.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Head and the Heart

**Author's Note:**

> I know I'm on a Pizza Box roll. Sorry but I'm not sorry. Heh heh. Hints of Charlie/Briggs if you squint.

He loves watching Charlie work. 

The kid is practically vibrating with anxiety beside him, and somehow Briggs isn’t all that stressed. At least, not all that stressed compared to last night when a trembling Mike stumbled into Graceland with his newest bit of drama regarding the Bello case. 

Charlie is unyielding and quiet, that dark-haired, dark-eyed appearance projecting sultry silk and veiled softness. Yet that butterfly exterior belies the cold steel of her sword. Briggs sometimes thinks that if he personified weaponry, she would be the Japanese katana — deadly and powerful but elegant and, if he might say so himself, sexy. Paige would be a longbow and arrows — showy, striking, and strong; Johnny, speedy and sassy like a pair of twin sais. Somehow a spear fits DJ more than anything else, or maybe a mace. The guy’s like a bull — he takes any situation he’s in by the horns and goes at it. Mike would be a set of throwing daggers or ninja stars — quick-minded, adaptable, and unmatched in any case despite his obvious youth and inexperience. 

And Briggs? Well, he’s always thought of himself as a Roman broadsword. 

Charlie is sweating Eddie big-time now, and Briggs grins to himself. That little sensual smile she wears, along with that calm voice, forms a wicked combination when it comes to her interrogation techniques. No mercy and all justice, delivered in a tiny dark gray suit and iron-like eyes. 

No mercy and all justice when it comes to Graceland. 

His heart twinges slightly at the memory of Lauren and how she had played him. It wasn’t so much that she’d betrayed him and the others and put everyone in danger, but the fact that she’d done so remorselessly and expectantly, and she hadn’t cared about the rest of Graceland. Just Donnie. It was always just about Donnie, and she’d used Briggs, Charlie, DJ, Johnny, Mike. Even Mike, who Briggs knows she doesn’t personally care for. Part of him even thinks she wouldn’t have shed a tear or lost a night’s sleep if Mike had died, just because he wasn’t her precious Donnie. 

She hadn’t even regretted her actions in the slightest, justifying them just because she hadn’t thought of the others. Or maybe she had thought about it and just hadn’t cared. Both scenarios didn’t bode well, and Briggs doesn’t like that. Not in the least bit. 

He loves how Charlie cares so much about Graceland. Just like he does. If he assumes he’s the head of the household — and he does — then Charlie surely is the heart. They both love Graceland with a passion, and although the house has just lost one inhabitant — or now two, he supposes — she has taken Mikey under her wing like he is her own child. 

“He knows we trumped this up.” 

Mike’s voice stirs Briggs from his reverie. 

“Yup.” 

“And he can go right to Bello and tell him the FBI knows more than they should.” 

“Yup.” 

The kid has one arm propped up against the window of the interrogation room. He’s been in that position for several times this week now, as if his head is so laden down with this new case and all these new lies and the new stress that he can’t hold it up on his own for long. When Briggs looks at him, Mike seems to be a hundred miles away in his own thoughts, before he sighs and looks back at Briggs. 

“But he won’t, because…” 

Mikey’s superior intellect seems to be failing him this time around, not that Briggs blames him. He doesn’t remember as a rookie being thrust this quickly or deeply into a criminal organization, either. And not just any criminal organization, considering that Bello runs the biggest heroin outfit on this side of town. Briggs decides to helpfully fill in the blanks like Mike is silently requesting him to. 

“Because right about now, Bello’s getting word that Eddie sold him out to Bobby Moi.” 

“Hang on.” The kid’s head turns slowly towards him, as a priceless poleaxed expression flits over his face. “This isn’t a bluff?” 

Briggs grunts assent and looks back blithely at him as Mikey’s baby blues widen in that innocently shocked look that must have had crowds of girls swooning over him in his college days. Probably even now, and all the way up to fifty years into the future. He gestures with his chin back to the window — watch and learn, kiddo — and Mikey obeys. 

“Hey, listen, I cannot give you witness protection unless you give me something,” Charlie points out blandly in the interrogation room. 

“Not going to happen,” Eddie snarls back. 

“All right, then I’m going to put you on a bus.” 

“I have a girl here.” 

“Well, now you got a ticket to Flagstaff,” Charlie replies in a saccharine tone. “I’ll have another FBI agent waiting for you outside.” 

“I’ll take your ticket,” Eddie answers frigidly. “But I want nothing else to do with you crooked sons of bitches.” 

Mike whirls on Briggs, his wide-eyed expression reminding Briggs absurdly of Bambi. He almost laughs, but the kid is so distressed that he can’t bring himself to do so. Instead, he rubs the back of his neck as words pour forth in a torrent out of the kid’s mouth like he can’t get them out fast enough. 

“If we spread that rumor, we are writing his death warrant.” 

“No, actually,” Briggs says drily, “he signed it himself when he took a job with a guy who pours hot lead into people’s eyeballs.” 

“We’re giving Bello an excuse to do something worse!” 

Briggs finds it ironic that Eddie’s biggest supporter here is the one kid who he tried to shoot. It’s almost touching, really. Mikey’s do-gooder nature is straight out of the FBI playbook. Briggs has honestly never met anyone — except maybe himself, once upon a time — who cares so much about people, and who tries to do his best in both the important and the mundane, and whose speech comprises of yes sir and no sir and thank you sir, but who can run rings around master criminals with his acting skills and his quick thinking and his smarts. The kid’s as blue-blooded and green as they come, but with a month out here in Graceland, he’s already more incredibly talented than 99% of the people Briggs has ever met in his life. Give him a couple of months more, maybe even years if the kid can make it with everyone here seemingly gunning for him, and he’s going to be magnificent. 

But seriously. Eddie has tried to pin all sorts of shit on Mikey; has even attempted to shoot him in the face, and all Mikey has done is strip his gun and toss a threat his way like a boss. Now he’s trying to plead Eddie’s case. 

“Uh-uh, we’re really giving Eddie a chance to walk away.” 

Mikey stares at him with those big blue eyes radiating concern and nervous curiosity, then gazes back at the window as Briggs just looks at him. 

The kid doesn’t know exactly why Briggs and Charlie are doing this. At least, Briggs thinks so, because the stress and the intensity of the situation is too much right now for Mike to see the fine print. 

Yes, they’re not bluffing. Yes, this is for real, and all hands are laid out on the table. But not just because Eddie is Bello’s right-hand man and dirty as they come, and not just because Eddie wants to blow Mike’s cover and this entire operation that Briggs has been working on for months and other agents have been sweating at for years. 

No, he and Charlie are going all out at the bat because Mikey is one of their own, and seeing him lost and scared and floundering does something to each of them. It makes Charlie go hug him and comfort him and do little things like bake him cookies or talk to him about his feelings — ugh — while it unfurls something in Briggs’ chest that makes him want to go plunge a fist into Eddie’s stomach or empty his gun until his people, his family members at Graceland, are all safe. 

He can’t do that with Bello and his outfit. Not yet. A certain amount of finesse still has to be required. So he sits and listens and watches with the tactical team while Mikey goes in and has to lie his ass off to over a dozen people who could probably smell his fear. People who would beat him like a birthday party pinata until he drowns in his own blood or use him for target practice — and deliberately miss the kill shots — if they find out exactly who he is. 

These scenarios are exactly what would happen if Eddie rats out Mikey. But Eddie has already been trying to tear Mikey down, stalking him and dragging at him with words and psychological scare tactics and death threats, and it’s taking a toll. Briggs can see it, and Charlie can see it, even if Mikey himself can’t, in the manner the kid carries himself and the way he walks and talks nowadays. It’s been a long three days, and the slumped set of Mikey’s shoulders, and the fact that he hardly smiles with all of his full wattage now, and the way he rests his head in his hands, say it all. 

So, yeah. He and Charlie aren’t bluffing. No way, not this time, not ever. He’s the head of Graceland, she’s the heart; and protecting one of their own — even if they have to go to hell and back — is exactly what they do.


End file.
